Posted on 12/16/2014 6:18:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The odds are stacked against low-income Americans seeking the education they need to move up.
Chelsey Stone had already escaped so many of the traps that keep poor children in poverty for life. She recalls begging neighbors for dinner when her mother sold their food stamps for drug money. She slept on the trampoline outside when the heroin showed up and her mom locked the door and the binges began. When she rebelled as a teenager, it was with poster board: She plastered her house with bright signs warning, “Do Not Throw Needles Away Here.”
Her teachers saw that spark. You can earn a college scholarship, they said. Land a good job, and don’t depend on the government or anyone else. She knew they were right. She was almost there.
Then she got pregnant. Then she was 17, working two jobs to feed herself and her daughter, Kiara. She started college and tried to carry a full load of classes, and it was too much. She dropped out. And there went her chance at the middle class, racing away across the plains.
“Where I was from, everyone was like, ‘She’s going to be like her mom.’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m not,’ ” Stone said. But when the baby came, “I couldn’t keep it up.”
The American economy has stopped working the way it used to for millions of Americans. The path from poverty to the middle class has changed — now, it runs through higher education.
In 1965, a typical man whose education stopped after four years of high school earned a salary 15 percent higher than the median male worker.
By 2012, a high-school-only grad was earning 20 percent less than the median.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If you knew as much as the high-school grad from 1965, you would still do OK today.
Liberals have destroyed the family, promoted free sex and glorified single motherhood and they’re shocked that these kids remain poor?
Cry me a river.
Problem is that big-education just needs bodies in their government-school classrooms for the cash register to ring. It really doesn’t matter that 80% of minority graduates can’t even read or add 2 + 2 when they graduate. The teachers unions and their members still their government checks. That’s all that matters.
Had a baby while unmarried at 17... I’m no Nostradamus, but I think I could have predicted how that would end up. My pity meter for Lakeesha and Kiara doesn’t budge. Of course, I’m still getting up at 6am and commuting for 2 hours to feed her baby, so I guess she doesn’t need my pity.
You can stop reading there. It started out like it was going to be a feel-good story about a girl overcoming her environment to succeed in life. But when you are 17 and pregnant and the father is nowhere to be found, you know that the story is not going to have a happy ending.
Title is misleading. The college trap?
There is a very expensive assisted living facility near me. A very substantial fraction of the residents have a high school degree only. Our businesses used to recognize bright, hard-working people, train them on the job, and let them move up.
yeah, that gosh darn college trap.....got her pregnant at 17
quote “Then she got pregnant”
lol
well, THERE’S your problem! This girls problem wasn’t that she didn’t go to college. It’s that she couldn’t get her legs together!
Want to ensure poverty for women and children?
Destroy the traditional family structure. Its really that simple.
There is a difference between growing up poor and growing up in a druggie household. The young woman in the story is more than just poor: raised in a drug house and was pregnant at 17. Even 30 years ago, it was virtually impossible for someone to overcome these issues, and with the cost of higher education spiraling out of control, it will only be worse.
“That creates a paradox: Being poor is a big impediment to getting the education that lifts you out of poverty.”
BS!!! BS!!! BS!!! The story itself proves it! Poverty did not trip Lakeesha up!!!! UNMARRIED AT AGE 17, SHE HAD A BABY!!!!!! Her own dumb-ass choices tripped her up. Hey, Lakeesha, if you can pay for sneakers, the fancy nails, the weaves, and the expensive phone, you could probably buy a condom or 2. How’s that for higher math?
What college trap?
Every reputable study has shown that if you avoid having irresponsible sex, don’t get pregnant and marry later in life, you have a good chance to escape poverty.
But liberals think its ok for young people to mess up their lives and there should be no consequences for it and moreover the taxpayers should be expected to ratify their wrong choices with their money.
Next thing we’ll hear is they need a free college education. I can just see the pitch coming.
Companies used to used IQ tests on new hires and select the smarter ones for in house management tracks. SCOTUS deemed IQ tests to be racist, so companies made College degrees a litmus test to hiring into a management track. At first it worked, because there was a strong correlation between IQ and college degrees.
That correlation no longer exists, but the government keeps pushing the concept that having a college degree, any degree, is the key to advancement and success. That is just a bunch of BS.
Children, especially minority children, are advanced through primary school without actually learning anything. Then because too many of them cannot qualify for college, especially minority children, they are given a free pass to enter college.
Because they are not prepared for a real college education, they drop out or move into seat warmer majors, that offer no real employment prospects.
When large numbers of these ill prepared and poorly educated graduates cannot find meaningful employment after graduation, we are told that the underlying problems are capitalism and/or racism.
I graduated from high school in 1963, from a small town school where most of the parents worked in trades, declining factories, or small businesses. There was no push to go college, and even that for all but a handful was the then very inexpensive nearby state college.
The big difference back then, in that environment, it was assumed that nobody would leave high school without a job skill. The guys all took serious vocational courses. The college bound took a one-year combined course of shorthand, typing, basic book keeping. The non-college bound girls took business courses and home economics. Everyone took an economics course that involved budgeting, running a small business, basic economic principles. Guidance didn't direct anyone to colleges they and their parents couldn't afford.
I look at that list of things that prepared us for the future, and NOT ONE of them is in the contemporary high school curriculum.
You can’t tell theses people that a High School education 40-50 years ago was equivalent to and in most cases far superior than most 4 year College Education’s today. It will destroy their highly coveted Self Esteem. Let them be Proud Morons, they like it that way.
Lakeesha needs an Obamaducation like she needs....
How much does it cost to get a liberal education, er indoctrination these days?
College is no longer as valuable as it used to be.
My dad told me that back in the 70s you could quit one job at a plant, walk down the street the same day to another, and get hired to start in a couple of days.
Seems like a dream land compared to today, where you pay tons of money to end up working at a Target...maybe.
No sex without marriage. That solves a lot of problems
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